“You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw said. “It was all be­cause of moral rel­ativism. You see, in that sort of a cli­mate, you are not al­lowed to crit­icise oth­ers — ​after all, if there is no ab­so­lute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for crit­icism?

“Now, this led to a good deal of gen­er­al frus­tra­tion, for peo­ple are nat­ural­ly cen­so­ri­ous and love noth­ing bet­ter than to crit­icise oth­ers’ short­com­ings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and el­evat­ed it from a ubiq­ui­tous pec­ca­dil­lo in­to the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to crit­icise an­oth­er per­son by con­trast­ing what he has es­poused with what he has ac­tu­al­ly done. In this case, you are not mak­ing any judg­ment what­so­ev­er as to the cor­rect­ness of his views or the moral­ity of his behavior — ​you are mere­ly point­ing out that he has said one thing and done an­oth­er. Vir­tu­al­ly all po­lit­ical dis­course in the days of my youth was de­vot­ed to the fer­ret­ing out of hypocrisy.

“You wouldn’t be­lieve the things they said about the orig­inal Vic­to­ri­ans. Call­ing some­one a Vic­to­ri­an in those days was al­most like call­ing them a fas­cist or a Nazi.”

Both Hack­worth and Ma­jor Napi­er were dumb­found­ed. “Your Grace!” Napi­er exclaimed. “I was nat­ural­ly aware that their moral stance was rad­ical­ly different from ours- but I am as­ton­ished to be in­formed that they ac­tu­al­ly condemned the first Vic­to­ri­ans.”

“Of course they did,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw said.

“Be­cause the first Vic­to­ri­ans were hyp­ocrites,” Hack­worth said, get­ting it.

Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw beamed up­on Hack­worth like a mas­ter up­on his fa­vored pupil. “As you can see, Ma­jor Napi­er, my es­ti­mate of Mr. Hack­worth’s men­tal acu­ity was not ill-​found­ed.”

“While I would nev­er have sup­posed oth­er­wise, Your Grace,” Ma­jor Napi­er said, “it is nonethe­less grat­ify­ing to have seen a demon­stra­tion.” Napi­er raised his glass in Hack­worth’s di­rec­tion.

“Be­cause they were hyp­ocrites,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw said, af­ter ig­nit­ing his cal­abash and shoot­ing a few tremen­dous foun­tains of smoke in­to the air, “the Vic­to­ri­ans were de­spised in the late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Many of the per­sons who held such opin­ions were, of course, guilty of the most nefarious con­duct themselves, and yet saw no para­dox in hold­ing such views be­cause they were not hyp­ocrites them­selves — ​they took no moral stances and lived by none.”

“So they were moral­ly su­pe­ri­or to the Vic­to­ri­ans-” Ma­jor Napi­er said, still a bit snowed un­der.

“-even though-​in fact, be­cause — ​they had no morals at all.” There was a mo­ment of silent, be­wil­dered head-​shak­ing around the cop­per ta­ble.

“We take a some­what dif­fer­ent view of hypocrisy,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw con­tin­ued. “In the late-​twen­ti­eth-​cen­tu­ry Weltan­schau­ung, a hyp­ocrite was some­one who espoused high moral views as part of a planned cam­paign of de­cep­tion –​ he never held these be­liefs sin­cere­ly and rou­tine­ly vi­olat­ed them in pri­va­cy. Of course, most hyp­ocrites are not like that. Most of the time it’s a spir­it-​is-​will­ing, flesh-​is-​weak sort of thing.”

“That we oc­ca­sion­al­ly vi­olate our own stat­ed moral code,” Ma­jor Napi­er said, work­ing it through, “does not im­ply that we are in­sin­cere in es­pous­ing that code.”

“Of course not,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw said. “It’s per­fect­ly ob­vi­ous, re­al­ly. No one ev­er said that it was easy to hew to a strict code of con­duct. Re­al­ly, the dif­fi­cul­ties in­volved — the mis­steps we make along the way — are what make it in­ter­est­ing. The in­ter­nal, and eter­nal, strug­gle, be­tween our base im­puls­es and the rig­or­ous de­mands of our own moral sys­tem is quintessen­tial­ly hu­man. It is how we con­duct our­selves in that strug­gle that de­ter­mines how we may in time be judged by a high­er pow­er.”

How about these:

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080904/COLUMNISTS09/809040370
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2008/09/gov-sarah-palin.html

Umm..do you have even a semi-credible link that anyone has said that having a pregnant teenage daughter disqualifies Palin as a candidate? The only criticism that I’ve seen is that her child is an example of the failure of abstinence-only education in place of sex-ed while noting that Palin is against sex-ed. There has also been some ink spilled about the hypocrisy of the family values crowd seeing nothing wrong with Palin’s daughter but railing against African-American teenage mothers, but thats a whole other matter.